Many foster children are eligible to receive tens of thousands of dollars in federal public benefits that they are legally entitled to, such as social security survivor, veterans, and disability benefits. Unfortunately, many of these foster children never receive this support because of existing state guidelines under which counties may intercept and spend those federal benefits without telling the child or their representative.
 

These benefits belong to orphaned and disabled foster children. Just as other foster children do not pay for their own costs of care or other county services, children who receive public benefits should not either.
 

Following the lead of bipartisan legislatures across the country, we intend to introduce legislation which will allow counties to screen for and conserve foster youth benefits in a savings account for when a foster youth exits care. This simple modification will ensure that more foster youths have savings to support critical needs such as housing, education and health care when they enter the workforce as an adult. Knowing that this requirement will fall upon the county children and youth agencies, our legislation will also allow counties to contract out this work to third parties.
 

What makes up just a fraction of our state’s child welfare spending could make a life-changing difference for our state’s foster youth, who face high rates of homelessness, addiction and depression. Please join us in making this critical change for Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable children.

This bill was previously introduced as H.B. 2617 in the 2023-24 legislative session. 

Previous cosponsors: McNEILL, HILL-EVANS, SCHLOSSBERG, GUENST, FIEDLER, OTTEN, SANCHEZ AND BERNSTINE